Dieting

The reason why most diets tend not to work for very long is because they are not sustainable. A person gains weight because he or she consumes more calories per day than needed. The diet creates a temporary deficit.

When the diet ends, the person goes back to normal eating and the weight comes back. Let's look at an example. Say that you weigh 150 pounds. That means that you burn 1,800 calories per day in a resting state. Let's also imagine that in the course of a day you burn 200 more calories living your life -- walking up and down steps, carrying in the groceries and so on.

Your calorie needs then are, on average, 2,000 calories per day. Now let's further imagine that, on average, you consume 2,050 calories per day. On a daily basis your body is taking in, and therefore storing, 50 calories more than it needs. So every 70 days (3,500 calories in a pound / 50 calories each day = 70 days) you gain 1 pound (0.45 kg). If that "50-extra-calories-per-day" trend continues, then over the course of a year you would gain 5 pounds.

This, by the way, is the pattern for a big portion of the U.S. population. If you over-consume by just a few calories per day then, over time, you will gain weight. Keep in mind that just one Oreo-type cookie contains 50 calories, so over-consuming is incredibly easy. One cookie contains 50 calories. Now, you go on a diet -- the amazing "Palm Beach Miracle Diet."

On this diet, you consume nothing but 2 cups of brown rice and a can of Vienna sausages, along with all the onions you care to eat, every day. You start this diet and you are consuming only 1,000 calories per day. You also start jogging 2 miles a day. That means that, on a typical day, you are consuming 1,200 calories less than you need.

Over the course of three days (3,500 calories in a pound / 1,200 calories each day = approximately 3 days), you will lose 1 pound of weight. You keep on this diet for two months and lose 20 pounds. The day you go off this diet, what is going to happen?

First, you are probably going to eat a lot more than normal because you have been eating nothing but rice and Vienna sausages for two months! Then you will settle into your "normal eating pattern" that you had before the diet.

And eventually all of the weight comes back. This is why diets don't work for most people. You do lose weight, but then go off the diet and gain it back. What is needed instead is a sustainable diet -- a food consumption and exercise plan -- that lets you live a normal life and eat normal foods in a normal way.

Eating Right Food

       Eating a healthy diet can make a difference in the way you act, feel and look. It's easy to tell when you're eating as you should. You look vibrant, feel energetic and better withstand the pressures of life. Poor nutrition, on the other hand, can lead to a number of health conditions, including heart disease, high blood pressure and some forms of cancer.

Proper healthy diets contain the right amounts of essential nutrients and calories to prevent nutritional deficiencies and provide a balance of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Following the Food Pyramid Guide is a good way to ensure that you're getting all the nutrients your body requires, but that's often easier said than done, especially in today's fast-paced world.

Few of us are willing to expend the time and energy necessary to make delicious, well-balanced, nutritionally sound meals. Instead, fast food or a quick (usually fatty) snack often takes the place of healthy eating. And, even if you have time to cook, you may be on a low-calorie weight loss diet and have intentionally limited your intake of food.

Or, perhaps you're a vegetarian and don't eat meat. Whatever your reason, getting the daily requirements of vitamins and minerals from diet alone can sometimes be tough.

There is help, however, for the nutritionally challenged:

Taking a daily multivitamin and mineral supplement can help assure you that even when you don't eat balanced meals, you're still getting the appropriate nutrients to maintain good health.

Industrialized Diet

The industrialized diet is very different from the natural foods and Paleolithic diets. By industrialized, I am referring not to the foods eaten by people who work in industry but to the trend of our times toward mass production and factory processing.

The industrialized diet contains a large proportion of refined foods. Many of the basic grains and sugar containing plants are stripped of their fiber and nutrients, leaving the concentrated sweet or starch powder that can be used to make or flavor other foods. Refined white flour and white sugar are the two basic components.

These "new" foods often have additives and preservatives to allow for packaging, shipping, and %u201Cshelf life.%u201D They fit in with the mass production ideology and fast-paced lifestyles of not only the American culture but many other technological and urban cultures of the world. Rural peoples still tend to eat more basically and naturally.

An interesting fact is that when the industrial or refined foods diet was introduced to different tribal cultures throughout the world, a general degradation of their health followed, usually within one generation. Tooth decay and diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer increased to levels that correlated with those in industrialized societies.

One of the people who had observed and described this phenomenon was Dr. Weston Price, a dentist, who studied native cultures eating such diets and compared them to like tribes who were still eating their classical diet. Dr. Price has reported on the descriptions of the tribal people themselves regarding the changes they have experienced, as well as his own observations.

This whole story is contained in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive Diets and Their Effects (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, 1948). Modern medicine and technology have made some fantastic advances that have affected the lives of almost every being on Earth, but the greatest dilemma now is how to balance these industrial changes with a healthier diet.

The refined and fast food diet has been one of the greatest economic supporters of our currently expensive medical system and has made medical doctors one of the richest professions because of all the acute and chronic disease that this technological diet generates. And herein, I believe, lies the dilemma. The Western economic structure is dependent on mass production, corporations, fast food restaurant chains, and refined, packaged foods.

The American consumer must consume them in even greater quantities, as more are being produced all the time. It is very possible that if more people cultivate foods and go back (or ahead) to eating more natural, chemical-free foods, it will either bankrupt or totally transform our current big business economy and health care system, instead of so many farms going bankrupt. But there is a lot of resistance and dollars preventing that from happening.

Billions are poured into advertising to brainwash people into buying and eating these nonfoods. Also, sweet and salty flavors are addicting, making it harder for the people eating all those pre-made snack foods to eat more naturally and enjoy it.

I do not have the answer to this dilemma (maybe more advertising for apples and sunflower seeds) other than writing this book. Time will tell. Change is usually slow, and adaptability and survival are timeless.

It is ultimately an individual choice. As more of us choose to eat more healthfully, more new and natural products will be developed and made available.

Paleolithic

        This is one of the more fascinating of the diet plans to come forth in recent years. And yet, it is based on some of our most ancient, evolutionary eating patterns the "caveman" or "caveperson" diet. (This is not to be confused with the dinosaur era, which was some 70 million years ago.) Actually, these people belonged to nomadic tribes and mainly used caves for winter shelter.

        This hunter-gatherer diet of the Paleolithic humans, our ancestors who inhabited Earth some 40,000 years ago, has been carried on in many tribal cultures. NowaDay s, however, it is essentially an extinct species of humankind that continues to hunt wild game and gather their foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds as available on a seasonal basis.

       Recent archeological findings suggest that these ancient ancestors of ours were a healthy bunch tall, strong bones, and body structures like modern-Day athletes they appear to be most similar to ours in regard to stature, and as long as they survived accidents, infections, and childbirth, their longevity was similar to ours, but with much less chronic degenerative disease.

Warrior's Diet

      The "warrior's diet" is a term that I have used to describe the way I often eat, especially on the Day s when I am busy and want to be productive. This diet consists of small meals or snacks eaten every two to three hours throughout the Day .

       These are simple meals and often only simple foods, such as a handful of almonds or sunflower seeds, an apple or two, carrot or celery sticks, crackers with avocado, or a bowl of rice with sprouts or cooked beans. Consuming the contents of one small to medium bowl should generate sufficient fuel to continue energetically along the Day's path.

       A warrior is always ready for action, with energy available whenever he or she is called. Big meals or lots of different foods can act as a mental and physical sedative, as they cause a lot of our energy and blood to be shunted to to our abdomen (liver, stomach, intestines) to digest and assimilate our food.

       The warrior eats large meals only in celebration or ritual, or given our modern society, at the end of a work day to relax at home alone or with friends or family. At this time, we can let go more of our physical concerns and tensions, be more aware of inner levels, and digest our meal and the Day's experiences. The warrior's concept is that food is our fuel; we give our body what it needs for continued combustion of energy.

      When I refer to being a warrior, I am talking about embracing the challenges of life with some feeling or passion. Food nourishment should support this and not devitalize us or generate excess aggressiveness or moodiness.

        Since I am a strong supporter of peace and positive action, I think of the warrior as one who does battle not with others but rather with life, the main struggle being to conquer our own weaknesses. Illness is, in a sense, succumbing to that battle; from a nutritional standpoint, when we take in too much, we may block the energy that is needed to cope with stress, and then we get stuck in the specifics of the battle, such as conflict with a person or job.

       Keeping ourselves clear through light and simple eating will allow our full energy to be available to us so that we can be the true "spiritual warriors" or "spiritual athletes" we were intended to be.

Weight Reduction Tips

Weight-loss diets come and go by the hundreds. Every year at least half a dozen new diets become popular with Americans, who are always looking for the latest, greatest, shortest route to that trim figure. There is usually at least one diet book on the best-seller list, while publishers are always on the lookout for a hot new book that can take a few million dollars out of the American peoples wallets.

Thus, there is no one specific type of reducing diet but a whole collection of diets that either reduce calories, restructure eating habits, or add a special food that cuts fat. I will not discuss all of them here; several are described in some of the therapeutic diets in Part Four, and most specifically in the Weight Loss program in Chapter 17.

Overall, we who are overweight or who easily put on extra pounds need to think of "diet" as our basic wholesome daily food intake, rather than a special project that we struggle through on occasion so we can return to the enjoyable habitual way of eating that creates the body that necessitated the original struggle.

Very simply, for the average overweight person, the best diet to reduce weight is one that provides fewer calories and burns more with exercise: less intake plus more output equals decreased mass, or as one ArgIslizm ends, "sweat equity." Eating small meals and drinking lots of water helps. Avoiding breads, sweets, dairy foods, and excess fats and oils will greatly reduce calories.

Low-calorie fruit or vegetable snacks are best. Importantly though, simple meals of lean proteins and lots of vegetables provide a good level of nutrients, enhance digestion and metabolism, and, if not overdone, will cause us to burn more calories and stored fat and thus reduce our weight. Developing good eating habits to change our basic diet is the only way to create the body we want in the long run.

Fasting For Weight Loss

True fasting is consuming only water and air, of course. This provides a strong inner experience; I believe that it should be done only under certain circumstances and ideally with the guidance and supervision of a physician or experienced nutritionist.

However, a surprising number of people have done water fasting successfully for short periods of time on their own. It is undertaken basically as a detoxification-cleansing-purifying process. It is not really a diet, since it provides no nutrients.

Juice fasting is more common, provides more nutrients, and can be undertaken for a much longer period than water fasting, but it is still deficient in total nutrition. Drinking only fruit and vegetable juices can be done for several day, a week or two, or even longer; the longer fasting is done, the more problems (called 'cleansing reactions' by those experiencing them) and deficiencies may be experienced.

I have known people who have fasted for longer than two months and have personally monitored some patients through thirty-day fasts, most often on the 'Master Cleanser,' or lemonade, diet. This fast and others, as well as the how-to's of fasting, are discussed in many books on the subject, including my first one, Staying Healthy With the Seasons.

It will also be discussed in Chapter 18 of this book, entitled Detoxification and Healing Programs. The fasting process is best used as a means of transformation to enhance the potential for change in habits and lifestyle during the reevaluation, detoxification period.

Weight is usually lost during the process, though I do not suggest fasting as a weight-loss diet. I do feel that it is one of the best natural therapeutic tools available to the healing arts, given the right situation. Resting from foods and letting the body process what is already stored is the perfect balance to our typical excessive and congesting way of eating.

(Body-organ-cell congestion comes from eating more fat and protein foods than we need.) I have called fasting, or the cleansing process, the "missing link in the American diet".